


Best Laid Plans

by draculard



Series: Comfortween [13]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Amputation, Crack Treated Seriously, Head Injury, Humor, Leg Injury, M/M, Reluctant Hurt/Comfort, The Bendu (Star Wars) - Freeform, The Rebels are (how to say this politely) very dumb, Whump, concussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: The Battle of Atollon doesn't turn out quite the way Thrawn hoped it would.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Series: Comfortween [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946224
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30
Collections: Comfortween 2020





	Best Laid Plans

“Oh, fuck,” Kanan said.

He stopped running, turning back to face the lightning storm over Atollon — and the Bendu that stood at the heart of it. Around him, the others gradually stopped running, too, most of them stopping to see what he was looking at. He shook his head, cutting off any questions before they began.

He wasn’t looking at anything in particular. He was _sensing_ something; a ripple in the Force that practically commanded him to stop. He narrowed his eyes, squinting at the lightning storm.

He could see the Imperials in his mind’s eye — the troopers and officers ducking for cover while Thrawn stood firm, facing the unknown head-on. He could see Thrawn’s eyes flickering thoughtfully over the Bendu, analyzing it without fear.

He could see Thrawn raising his blaster.

“ _No_ ,” Kanan gasped, the word wrenching its way out of him against his will. Already, he was running forward without giving himself permission to do it; something bad was about to happen, he could sense it — but he didn’t know what, didn’t know where to go or what to do in order to stop it—

And then, long before he could reach the Imperials, it happened.

A blast of energy knocked each and every one of them flat on their feet. The Imperials nearest to the Bendu were hiding behind the shelter walls, and when the energy blast hit them they disintegrated, caught in a kinetic wave that tore every molecule in their bodies apart. After taking its first group of victims, the energy blast dissipated quickly; it slammed the second group of Imperials to the ground but left their bodies intact.

“Kanan—” Hera said, but nothing in the entire galaxy could have stopped Kanan. He reached the scene of attack mere moments after the Bendu itself disappeared, leaving a thunderstorm in its wake. Rain split the sky and clouds blotted out the pale sun over Atollon as Kanan knelt among the bodies.

He closed his eyes. They should take the chance to run, he knew — and maybe the other Rebels would do exactly that, but Kanan couldn’t stand to. He’d felt the searing split-second pain as those men disintegrated, and what he’d sensed through the Force was only a faint echo compared to what they actually went through. He’d been the cause of that; he was the one who goaded the Bendu into joining the fight — a fight against people who didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving something like that. 

He shouldn’t feel guilty, he told himself. 

He _didn’t_ feel guilty. This was war; people died, and that was that; you couldn’t afford to feel guilt on the battlefield.

But he felt _responsible_. He reached out to the living Force, searching the field for survivors, and felt a wave of relief; of the bodies on the ground, almost everyone was still breathing. They were unconscious but alive. Those who were dead couldn’t be helped; those who were unconscious didn’t seem to need it, so all Kanan did was turn their heads so they wouldn’t choke in the rain. None of them were injured in any grievous way; all of them would wake up in time.

Except…

Except Thrawn had been close to the blast, Kanan remembered. Other than the unfortunate Imperials who’d chosen to hide a little too close to the Bendu, Thrawn had been the one standing closest to it when the blast of energy tore through his men. He must have disintegrated, too, Kanan thought with a sense of confusion and shock so great that it felt like an out-of-body experience; it was impossible to believe they’d taken out their most formidable enemy so far in such a quick and impersonal blow.

He stretched out to the Force again. It was _truly_ impossible to believe, he thought grimly — because when he’d used the Force to check on the men around him, he’d noticed something — an unconscious mind that wasn’t quite like the others. 

A mind that wasn’t human.

He found it again just as the others joined him; only Hera and Ezra had stayed behind, and now they picked their way through the survivors the same way Kanan had, squinting through the rain and searching for anything they could do to help. He could see open guilt on Ezra’s face, and a sort of irritated sense of duty on Hera’s, as if she’d rather be piloting their escape but couldn’t resist the urge to stay behind and help. 

With a sigh, Kanan closed his eyes and concentrated. He walked blindly through the squadron of unconscious Imperials, seeking out the thread of alien thoughts and sensations near the border between living men and the dead. 

When he found it, he stopped and took a deep breath.

Thrawn lay unconscious in the dirt, like his still-living men behind him. He’d struck the ground so hard that his helmet had cracked and now lay on the ground meters away, knocked right off his head. Kanan could read almost nothing from his mind; while the other men swam through unconsciousness, dreaming vaguely of the pain and fear they’d felt before they were injured, Thrawn’s mind was a map of tangled ciphers, numbers and symbols and images cascading against each other in a lazy swirl that Kanan couldn’t possibly read.

He got no sense of emotion. He noticed no signs of pain.

And yet, when he looked down at Thrawn’s white uniform, he saw nothing but blood.

It started at Thrawn’s left thigh and splashed up over the rest of his body, with smears of crimson on his collar, his neck, his chin. Patches of white showed through here and there, high up on his uniform, but lower — closer to his leg — there was nothing but blood.

His leg, Kanan noted with almost clinical numbness, was gone.

Kanan dropped to his knees, his hands moving automatically. With his lightsaber, he cut through the empty fabric of Thrawn’s trouser leg, exposing the wound high above his left knee. It was a wonder he hadn’t bled out yet, Kanan thought, his heart thumping. 

Carefully, he held his lightsaber close to his vibroblade, letting the intense heat from the saber turn the blade red. Rain sizzled off the lightsaber and evaporated on contact. He was aware of Hera and Ezra coming up behind him; he felt a flicker in their minds as they realized who he was standing over and their sense of guilt and concern shifted into something more like wariness.

“Kanan…?” said Ezra cautiously.

Kanan didn’t answer. He switched his lightsaber off and checked on Thrawn mentally, making sure he was unconscious before pressing the flat edge of his vibroblade against the wound. 

The unconsciousness didn’t last.

Pain flared in Thrawn’s mind, overriding the map of ciphers Kanan had seen before and blotting out everything else. No sound emanated from him, but his back arched and his limbs tensed like he’d been electrified — his arms jerked up as if to ward off an attack and then he curled them in against his chest, his fists clenched so tightly that his arms were trembling. His teeth were bared, his eyes squeezed shut in suffering so intense that Kanan had no choice but to withdraw from the Force if he wanted to stay functional.

He moved the knife blade over Thrawn’s wound in quick bursts, trying not to damage what little healthy tissue remained. Thrawn held still, never opening his eyes, enduring the treatment in agonized silence. He’d brought his fists up to cover his eyes, but Kanan could see him biting something — his lip, his tongue, the inside of his cheek — until blood trickled out of his mouth and down the line of his jaw. 

Thrawn’s good leg flinched reflexively, unstoppably, every time Kanan applied the knife blade to his wound — but his bad leg remained horribly still. How he managed to stay silent, Kanan couldn’t say. 

He heated the blade again quickly, taking a second pass over Thrawn’s wound, and then he tossed the still-hot knife away from him. 

“We’ve gotta get him to the ship,” he said, his voice coming out breathless from tension. His arms were trembling — an after-effect of adrenaline, he supposed — as he forcibly tugged Thrawn’s hands away from his face, clasping the wrists together. Thrawn was too far gone to fight him; Hera handed Kanan a pair of stuncuffs from her belt and he snapped them into place, feeling a surge of misplaced guilt about it.

Thrawn’s eyes were still squeezed shut and leaking water, his lips and teeth smeared with blood. He seemed unconscious of the raindrops coming down on his face, turning the ground beneath him into mud. When Kanan reached out to his mind again, tentatively, he saw pain folding itself into the map of ciphers, like Thrawn was compartmentalizing it away from the rest of his thoughts.

“Let’s get him up,” Kanan said.

He moved around Thrawn, searching for a flat piece of debris he could use as a stretcher; he didn’t think Thrawn’s spine was injured, but the man’s mind was a mystery to him, making it impossible to say for sure. 

“We’re taking him with us?” asked Ezra.

Kanan located a chunk of flat durasteel a little longer than Thrawn was tall and levitated it his way. “He’s injured,” he said simply, most of his concentration focused on the task at hand. 

“And he’ll make a good prisoner,” Hera added. “ _And_ he’s nonhuman. No nonhuman joins the Empire willingly; we might be doing him a favor.”

Kanan nodded silently. With Ezra’s help, he set the durasteel down on the ground and focused the Force on Thrawn instead, lifting him a few inches off the dirt and then lowering him back onto the makeshift stretcher. Thrawn barely reacted; his lips twitched, exposing his bloody, bared teeth for half a second as he was set down — but he didn’t struggle. Either he understood the danger he was in or he was too out of it from blood loss and pain to realize who was helping him. 

Kanan stepped up to the floating stretcher and looked down, shielding Thrawn’s face from the rain with one hand. After a moment, noticing the lack of rain — or perhaps sensing a shadow over his face — Thrawn cracked open his eyes.

They were dazed, unfocused. They flickered from Kanan to the empty space around him, as if Thrawn were seeing double — or hallucinating people who weren’t there.

“Sleep,” said Kanan, putting the full weight of the Force behind the word. 

He felt a shift in Thrawn’s mind — an automatic response to the sound of Kanan’s voice. Kanan reached out to the pain centers in Thrawn’s brain, using the Force to soothe each one as much as he could. There was a dim sense of thoughtful curiosity from Thrawn, the only emotion Kanan could read off him — if you could call curiosity an emotion — and without pain to keep the exhaustion at bay, sleep engulfed the borders of Thrawn’s mind, taking over the edges of the map first, then swallowing up each splash of color, every number, and every musical string of alien script one by one. 

Thrawn’s head lolled to the side. There was a bright smear of blood where the back of his head had rested against the durasteel. 

“Aw, shit,” said Kanan. “Hera—”

“We gotta go,” she said impatiently, giving the makeshift stretcher a little push. “Float him to the ship. We can take a look at it there.”

Kanan swallowed his concerns and nodded. He and Ezra kept the stretcher afloat, with Hera leading the way back to the ship. The ramp was down and waiting for them as they ran through the rain, their boots slipping on the wet durasteel decking.

“Kanan, thought you were—” Zeb started as they came in. He cut himself off, mouth hanging open as he caught sight of the stretcher and the unconscious Imperial lying on it.

“No time,” said Kanan, his voice clipped. “Hera?”

She was already climbing past him to the cockpit. “Got it,” she said.

They made it out of orbit just as Imperial backup came in.

* * *

Thrawn woke slowly; the first thing he was aware of was pain — waves of it, impossible to trace back to the source. His core ached as though he’d been gutted, but that wasn’t where the pain originated; he could feel it grinding through his nerve endings, starting at his toes — and concurrently at his fingertips — and concurrently at the cap of his skull.

All around him was darkness; there were no sounds that he could make out; he was lying on his back, he suspected, but he couldn’t feel the ground beneath him. Or the stretcher. Or the bed. Was he in a bed? Several thought processes occurred simultaneously, like equations. _If unconscious = then injured. If injured = then men likely injured as well. If lying on ground = then wake up + check on men. If stretcher = in transit, hold still. If bed = wake up + status report._

But why was he lying down in the first place?

What had happened?

The memory hit him at the same time as a burning, nerve-eating pain. Thrawn’s breath caught in his throat; he held still as the pain moved over him in a slow, rolling wave. It faded so slowly that he couldn’t be sure it was fading at all until it was gone, leaving only the regular dull ache of injury in its wake.

The Bendu. He remembered now. He’d thought it might be an illusion of sorts — a Force-projection put out by the Jedi to intimidate his men. A decent first hypothesis. But when he’d raised his blaster to test this theory — so he could dismiss it and/or adjust his plan of attack — what then?

His memory was blank. He stared into the darkness, trying desperately to kick his brain into gear. It came together sluggishly, like he had to force his mind to piece the memory back together.

There had been an energy blast. He’d seen the men before him…

He’d seen his men…

He set this memory aside, boxing it up and putting it to the back of his mind. They’d been hiding; a wiser decision would have been to run, but their culture and upbringing forbade it. So they’d hid, and they’d waited for him to come up with a plan of attack — or order a retreat — and he’d been too slow on both accounts. There were ways to prevent this from happening again; firstly, he would work with his men, strengthen their instincts and innovation through training and careful selection of personnel, and he would make sure they knew he would not punish them for a wise tactical decision. Secondly, he would have to examine and adjust his own behavior (should he have ordered a retreat right away? Why hadn’t he? How had it affected the outcome?). But this was a less difficult task; he’d done it all his life. 

He studied the less painful aspects of that memory, setting his men aside.

His leg was missing, he noticed. His knees were bent — rather, his _knee_ was bent — and his thighs were pressed together, but there was no left knee pressing up against his right knee, no left calf against his right. He could feel his left leg, but it had to be phantom pain and nothing else, because incongruously, he couldn’t feel anything _touching_ his right leg.

But why was he blind? He thought of the energy blast again. Had it taken his left leg and his eyes as well? He could feel his arms — he _thought_ he could feel his arms — so nothing else was harmed as far as he could tell. 

He searched the darkness all around him. In the distance, so muted he could barely hear them, there were voices. Thrawn concentrated, then felt his concentration fracture; he went still as another wave of agony overtook him, tried to ignore it, listened as hard as he could.

Gradually, the voices got louder.

“...kay,” said one of the voices. A male voice. A _familiar_ male voice, someone he’d heard before, but didn’t necessarily know. “...back eventually…”

Kanan Jarrus?

There was a pause; silence. No other voice answered him. Had he offended them somehow? They were thinking awfully hard about their response; in Thrawn’s experience, that meant they’d been scolded or corrected somehow, and expected a negative response. Perhaps wrongly; he didn’t know Jarrus well enough to say. Thrawn strained his ears.

“...be alright.”

Jarrus again.

“...work out. We’ll get you a nice prosthetic.” His voice was coming clearer now, but it was still just Jarrus. The other person remained silent. “Get you up and about in no time.”

 _Why_ was the other person silent? Injured like Thrawn, and unable to speak? Was the voice he heard actually a recording? Or was Jarrus here, actually talking to himself? Thrawn held still through another wave of pain, his body tensing as much as it could in his exhaustion — and then, with an unpleasant thrill that went up his spine and straight to his aching head, he felt fingers brush against the back of his hand.

“...as soon as you wake up, of course,” Jarrus said.

 _Oh, c’ersvat!_ Jarrus was talking to _him_. 

With great effort, Thrawn moved his hand out from under Jarrus’s — and for some reason, his other hand moved with it, too. He lifted them both to his face, his fingers coming down clumsily on top of his mouth and sending a sharp, stinging pain through his lip. Gingerly, he moved his hands slowly up to his eyes.

He felt his own eyelashes against his cheekbones; a little higher up, moving delicately, he felt his closed eyelids.

His _closed_ eyelids?

He wasn’t blind, then. His damn eyes were _closed_.

Thrawn opened them with an exasperated sigh. He’d had a head injury, he understood now; he could feel a throbbing pain at the crown of his skull, where he must have struck the ground; but hadn’t he been wearing a helmet? Had the impact been that severe?

His head was already turned to the side, and as he squinted against the painfully-bright lights overhead, he saw Kanan Jarrus sitting next to him, his boots propped up on what looked like a medical tray and his eyes fixed on a datapad. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed yet that Thrawn was awake; his hand was still resting absently on the sheets near Thrawn’s waist; there was a glint of concentration in his eyes that Thrawn had seen before, and it made him almost certain Jarrus was not pretending not to notice so as to entice him into an ill-advised attack. 

_Very_ ill-advised, since he wasn’t sure he could even move, and knew for certain he couldn’t _stand_.

Thrawn shifted his hands a little and inclined his chin, ignoring the rush of pain to his head so he could examine the stuncuffs around his wrists. He could see his fingers shaking from strain, and after a while, he couldn’t hold his hands up any longer. He let them rest against his chest, then thought better of it and extended his elbows. The backs of his hands brushed against the tops of his thighs, but he couldn’t stretch them down any further to see where his left leg ended.

He was quietly shifting his right leg against his left, trying to figure out where the amputation started, exactly, when Jarrus glanced over at him. 

“Oh,” he said, nearly dropping his datapad. “You’re awake!”

He was just as clever as the Imperials always suspected, Thrawn thought dryly. It did make him feel better about thinking he was blind, though **.** He watched the medical tray wobble as Jarrus sat up straight, removing his boots from the surface of it. Carefully, Thrawn angled his head toward Jarrus, taking advantage of his pupil-less eyes to scan the room without appearing to. 

He was in a storage room that was trying very hard not to _look_ like a storage room, he realized. Crates had been pushed to the side to make room for his bed, and sheets had been thrown over them haphazardly — but he could see traces of dirt on the floor that looked like they contained flecks of sawdust as well as metal shavings, which meant the corners of the crates had splintered against the ground as they were dragged in. Most likely full of spare parts, then, Thrawn thought; they wouldn’t put him in with the weapons.

If they had any, after Atollon.

There was an open medical kit somewhere nearby — he could smell bacta, faint but unmistakable, coming toward him on a draft from his left. So there was a door there, too; they’d arranged the crates to make it seem like the only way out was the door to his right.

Where had the Rebels found a place to land so quickly? Or had he been out for longer than he thought? He could tell he wasn’t on a ship; the floor was solid beneath the bed, unmoving; there was none of the gentle swaying motion one grew accustomed to on a starship. But the noise level was atrocious — there were industrial fans running somewhere on the other side of the wall, machines humming in the room with him, out of sight, and white noise coming from—

Oh, thought Thrawn, blinking rapidly. No, that was coming from his own head. He lifted his cuffed hands to his left ear and tried futilely to rub the sound away.

“Can you hear me?” Jarrus asked.

Thrawn resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They hadn’t searched him very thoroughly, he noticed; as he rubbed his ear, he could see that his chrono had been removed from his wrist — but the inner seam of his cuff hadn’t been cut open or searched, as he’d expected it to be. He’d had a whole contingency plan set up for that; now it appeared this whole operation would be much simpler than he’d originally thought.

A beige hand appeared in front of his face, waving from side to side. Thrawn eyed it, his dizziness intensifying.

Well, he thought wearily, at least the Rebels had taken the bait. He could feel the tracker sewn into his cuff, pulsating against his wrist in time with his heartbeat.

Unfortunate that they’d also taken his goddamn _leg_.

“You _are_ awake,” Jarrus declared, studying Thrawn’s face. Thrawn studied him back with hooded eyes, unimpressed. “Are you alright?” Jarrus asked. “How are you feeling?”

Was he _alright_? Someone desperately needed to teach this man how to interrogate a prisoner.

“Can’t talk, huh?” said Jarrus with what sounded like genuine sympathy. Thrawn watched in silent horror as Jarrus’s hand approached his face. Human fingers — unpleasantly warm, and smelling slightly of hyperspace fuel — touched his bottom lip and pulled it down, exposing his teeth.

What the _hell_ was he doing? Thrawn weighed the wisdom of using his bound hands to bat Jarrus away from him, then remembered the trembling in his fingers and decided it was probably useless, anyway.

“Hmm,” said Jarrus, studying Thrawn’s mouth. “It looks like just a split lip. There’s a lot of blood, but I don’t think you fractured any of your teeth…”

Thrawn tilted his chin up slightly, knocking Jarrus’s hand away from his lips.

“Do you mind?” he asked levelly.

...It came out sounding rather like an incoherent groan. 

“Yeah, I hear you, buddy,” said Jarrus sympathetically. Thrawn had only just managed to throw off Jarrus’s hand and now it was coming at him again like a heat-seeking missile, aiming straight for his forehead.

If Thrawn could have flinched, he would have. But all he could do was close his eyes and hold very still as Jarrus’s palm came down on his forehead, his little finger brushing through Thrawn’s hair.

It was _intensely_ uncomfortable. Jarrus’s palm was far too warm, and his skin was slightly damp. He seemed to have similar thoughts about Thrawn; his nose wrinkled and he ran his palm upward toward Thrawn’s hair, brushing it back. The blunt edge of his fingernail caught on a clump of hair glued together by dried blood, and Thrawn squeezed his eyes shut as it set off another wave of paralyzing pain.

“Skin’s pretty cold and dry,” Jarrus muttered to himself — rather judgmentally, Thrawn thought. He winced when Jarrus’s thumb caught on another clot of blood.

“Hair needs washed,” Jarrus added.

 _Definitely_ judgmentally, Thrawn thought. He opened his eyes a little, but Jarrus’s hand was so close to his face that all he could see was the warm reddish glow of artificial lighting reflecting off Jarrus’s skin. 

Which was … actually rather soothing. Thrawn blinked, able to open his eyes properly for the first time now that Jarrus’s hand was partially blocking the harsh lights. He took a deep breath to prepare himself to speak, and in the process he caught a heady whiff of hyperspace fuel and human sweat and the scent of Jarrus’s skin.

He reorganized his thoughts. First things first:

“How long,” said Thrawn carefully, “have I been asleep?”

Despite his best efforts, the words came out slurred. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his voice almost unrecognizable. To his dismay, Jarrus shifted his hand briefly to look at Thrawn’s face, and Thrawn was forced to close his eyes again.

As if he sensed the issue, Jarrus put his hand back and said, “Lights: dim setting three.”

There was a pause. The warm glow of light off Jarrus’s hand faded a little, but Jarrus kept his hand in place a moment longer before moving away. Thrawn blinked in the now almost entirely dark room.

“You’ve been asleep for about a day,” Jarrus said.

Which was infuriatingly imprecise, but what else could Thrawn expect from the Rebels?

“Can you be more specific?” he asked, his voice coming out thick from sleep.

Jarrus shrugged. “I think it was about … six p.m. when we rescued you?”

 _Rescued_ , he said. Wasn’t that just emblematic of the Rebels in every way? Sic an unknown creature on you and your men, knock you out, amputate your leg, take you captive and then … congratulate themselves for rescuing you.

“So I’d say it’s been about twenty-six, twenty-seven hours,” Jarrus continued. “Different planets, you know. Tough to tell.”

 _So_ imprecise. But if Jarrus was uncertain of the time, then they’d likely hopped systems, and knowing the Rebels, they’d taken him somewhere in the Unknown Regions or right on the edge of it, like the Gordian Reach. Possibly Arda or Maridun; more likely one of the so-called ‘uninhabited’ moons nearby.

Had he not warned the other Grand Admirals about these moons? He _distinctly_ remembered warning them about these moons.

He’d bet his entire art holo collection that he was on Yavin 4. 

With a sigh, Thrawn raised his hands until they rested against his chest. His arms felt tight and heavy, with an uncomfortable tingling in them that meant his nerves had been compressed. He glanced down — with Jarrus watching his every move — and rolled his one remaining ankle in a circular motion, testing its range and stiffness. It wasn’t tied to anything, he noted.

They had an almost heartwarming amount of trust in him. He let his head fall back against the mattress, and when he did, he caught Jarrus staring at him with a grating amount of sympathy.

“I hoped maybe you wouldn’t notice until the medic could talk to you,” Jarrus said.

Notice? Thrawn blinked at Jarrus, not understanding.

...Did Jarrus think he’d only _just now_ noticed he was missing a leg?

Thrawn lifted his bound hands to cover his face, unable to hold back a groan. It was 70% pain and 30% exasperation, but Jarrus seemed to interpret it as 100% psychological trauma. When Thrawn’s wave of pain dissipated a little, he could hear Jarrus making sympathetic noises; it took him a moment to recognize the fact that there was a hand on his upper arm, patting him like some sort of tooka.

“I know,” said Jarrus softly. “I … trust me, I know what it’s like. But there are plenty of high-grade prosthetics and synthetic flesh out there — I checked the HoloNet and they’ve even got a few shades of blue, so…”

Thrawn could rotate his wrists a little inside the stuncuffs, but not enough to lay his palms flat against his face. He settled for digging the knuckles of his thumbs into his closed eyes in a futile attempt to massage away his headache. He could faintly hear Jarrus rambling on about prosthetics, but couldn’t make out the words behind the rush of white noise in his ears that seemed to accompany every wave of pain.

This one started in his legs. His _leg_ , rather. The missing one. He felt the agony take hold in his toes — toes he no longer had — and it didn’t feel like the sensation spread up his leg so much as it felt like the sensation tore his leg apart, ripping muscle from bone and separating particles of mass from each other one cell at a time.

His vision turned white. The roar in his ears grew louder.

He could no longer feel the beat of the tracker against his pulsepoint.

He could no longer feel anything.

* * *

He woke to the comforting feeling of a warm palm against his forehead.

The _discomforting_ feeling, Thrawn corrected himself as he remembered where he was. He felt the blunt edge of Jarrus’s thumbnail scratching gently against his scalp and let his eyes flutter closed again, leaning into the touch by instinct, too exhausted to fight against it or even open his eyes. Vaguely, he could hear Jarrus muttering nonsense at him — phrases that absolutely did not need to be said aloud, such as “It’s okay” and “You’re alright” — but the pain had left Thrawn too nauseated to tell him to stop.

So he endured it.

And by the time the nausea faded, he didn’t really feel like complaining. He took a shaky breath, tilting his head slightly so Jarrus’s palm pressed closer against his forehead. Where Jarrus’s hand touched him — and only there — Thrawn didn’t feel any pain.

“Better?” Jarrus asked him.

Thrawn didn’t dignify that _highly_ stupid question with an answer. Even his wrists hurt. 

...Why did his wrists hurt?

Thrawn lifted his head sharply, shaking Jarrus’s hand off him. He raised his bound hands and furrowed his eyebrows at the fresh lines of blood staining the cuffs. He could feel the metal cutting into raw, open wounds that he couldn’t see.

“Ah,” said Jarrus awkwardly. He put a hand on Thrawn’s curled fingers and tried to push Thrawn’s hands down and out of his sight. He was too gentle; Thrawn refused to be moved for a moment, determined to examine the wounds he’d caused himself while straining against the flash of pain a moment ago.

But of course, he realized, he could use this to his advantage. For one thing, he certainly didn’t want to be in cuffs when the fleet arrived. There was nothing wrong with being rescued, but he would prefer to be sitting up and ready to go rather than lying in bed bound and half-conscious when the troopers came in.

So when Jarrus pushed on his hands, there was only a split-second when Thrawn resisted. Then, with a hiss of pain, he snapped his wrists down as if flinching, deliberately tensing his body and arching his back.

Luckily (?) for him, this kicked off a very real wave of pain, so he didn’t have to pretend for very long.

“What is it?” asked Jarrus, an unmistakable note of anxiety and concern in his voice.

God, these Rebels got attached to prisoners quickly, didn’t they?

Thrawn hissed through bared teeth, his eyes narrowed to slits. He watched through his lashes as Jarrus studied his hands. 

“Looks like—” Jarrus started, just barely touching Thrawn’s right hand.

Thrawn groaned, drowning Jarrus’s voice out. “It’s caught,” he said through clenched teeth.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he said it, so he couldn’t see that Jarrus had frozen in place -- but he could feel it.

“Caught?” Jarrus said. “What’s caught?”

With great effort, Thrawn said, “The cable…”

If it was possible, Jarrus went even more still. Inside every pair of stuncuffs was a cable used to conduct a current of energy. It was a rare but well-known flaw that, in some cases, the casing of a cheaply-made pair of stuncuffs could crack open, and the cable could break, stabbing into the prisoner’s wrists and conducting a low but painful level of energy directly into their skin.

This absolutely was _not_ happening to Thrawn.

But Jarrus certainly thought it was. He examined the cuffs, careful not to touch them, and then he examined Thrawn’s face. The pain he saw there was genuine, but Jarrus didn’t just rely on his instincts to tell him so. As Thrawn concentrated on the sensation of disintegrating pain around his left leg, he could feel invisible fingers stretching out toward his mind, trying to gauge whether or not he was trying to deceive.

Thrawn found himself in the difficult position of mimicking innocence.

Easier to just focus on the pain, he decided. He embraced the agony in his leg with a vengeance, and after a moment, Jarrus flinched back.

“Okay, okay,” he said, the words coming out as a sigh. “Hold still.”

Thrawn was already still. He’d barely processed Jarrus’s words before he heard a faint click and felt the stuncuffs fall to the bed.

“Better?” Jarrus asked.

Thrawn sat up a little, staring at his freed hands in something like amazement. There were raw red wounds encircling his wrists where the cuffs had dug into his skin. He stared at them, then at Jarrus, unable to speak and absolutely unable to hide his surprise at how easy that had been.

“Hey,” said Jarrus softly. He folded himself onto the side of the bed, prompting Thrawn to furrow his eyebrows and edge away. “Hey, it’s okay,” Jarrus said in the same soft tone. He reached for Thrawn’s damaged wrists.

He’d been out for twenty-six, perhaps twenty-seven hours, Thrawn reminded himself wearily. The tracker was still going. The Chimaera would be here any moment now.

He allowed Jarrus to take his hands.

“Let me take a look,” Jarrus said in what was possibly the most condescending ‘soothing’ voice Thrawn had ever heard. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Jarrus turned his hands over, examining the wounds. He rubbed his thumbs over the heel of Thrawn’s palm, generating an electric sensation that was uncomfortably similar to the waves of pain emanating from Thrawn’s skull and leg.

With a sad smile, Jarrus looked up at Thrawn, no longer examining his hands.

But still _holding_ them, Thrawn noted grumpily. 

“I promise you,” Jarrus said, “things are going to get better for you once we get settled. We’re not like the Empire; once you’re all healed up, you’ll have the choice of whether to stay with us or go back home.”

Oh, what a load of krayt-spit. Thrawn heard himself huff, but fortunately, Jarrus didn’t seem to think it was anything but an expression of pain.

“Did they treat you okay in the Empire?” Jarrus asked, his eyes flickering almost sorrowfully over Thrawn’s face. Irritation made Thrawn flex his fingers involuntarily; Jarrus interpreted this, quite incorrectly, as Thrawn squeezing his hand. He squeezed back. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand. Things aren’t like that here; you’re safe now.”

Oh god oh god oh _god_ he was going to commit murder. Thrawn felt his face tighten against his will and could only hope that Jarrus would take it as a sign of pain instead of impatience. He found himself outright glaring at Jarrus, unable to help it.

And unbelievably, Jarrus’s face softened beneath the glare. He kept one hand on Thrawn’s and reached out with the other, gently tipping Thrawn’s face up.

“It’s okay,” Jarrus whispered.

Oh god no.

“I got you,” Jarrus said, his voice little more than a breath.

Oh _god_ no. 

Jarrus leaned forward and — not seeming to realize that Thrawn was still as a statue and glaring daggers at him — pulled him into the most unfortunate kiss Thrawn had ever experienced. He kept his lips firmly closed as Jarrus kissed him, refusing to open his mouth (and absolutely not enjoying it at all). And somehow, this lack of response didn't deter Jarrus one bit, as if he could somehow read Thrawn's mind to see — that is, as if he somehow thought — well, it didn't deter him. He only pulled back slightly, put his hand on the back of Thrawn’s head, and pulled him into a gentle hug once the kiss was over.

What the hell _did_ deter Rebels? Thrawn wondered as Jarrus folded him into his arms. Were they all this stupid?

~~And soft?~~

~~And warm?~~

“I know,” Jarrus whispered, holding Thrawn close as he trembled with the suppressed desire to kill. “I know. But I’ve got you now. It’s okay.”

Were there any humans out there who actually _enjoyed_ being patronized like this? If so, Thrawn didn’t want to meet them. He shifted until his chin rested against Jarrus’s shoulder and he could see the chrono on the wall.

He counted down the seconds.

He 100% did _not_ lean into the hug.

~~Much .~~

And when Jarrus’s comlink beeped and he had to pull away, Thrawn sank back onto the mattress with a sigh of relief (and nothing else whatsoever).

Frowning at his comlink, Jarrus said, “I gotta go.” He was already standing, agitation and distraction showing clearly on his face. “I-I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder as he left.

Thrawn said nothing. He watched Jarrus go wearily, lines of exhaustion on his face and waves of pain washing over his body. His eyes shifted to the chrono again.

Jarrus, that beautiful idiot, had forgotten to replace his stuncuffs. With a deep sigh, Thrawn raised his hands to his face and used his thumbnail to split the seam inside his bloodstained uniform sleeve, revealing the tiny tracker and the hairpin taped to it. He removed the pin and stuck it into the tracker, activating a transmitter and mic.

“Commodore Faro?” he said quietly.

“In position, sir,” said Faro right away. “You were right, sir. Our tracker shows you on a jungle moon called Yavin 4.”

Oh, he knew it. Thrawn flexed his wounded wrists. “Are you in orbit?” he asked.

There was a pause.

“Surveillance ships only, sir.”

Good.

“Proceed as planned,” Thrawn said, thinking idly of Jarrus. He let the tracker rest on the mattress near his head and set to work on the abandoned stuncuffs, dismantling them to access the cable inside. “I’ll be waiting when you’re done,” he said. “Thrawn out.”

Step One: Craft a weapon.

Step Two: Blockade the door.

~~Step Three: Do not think about Jarrus.~~

Step Three: Wait.

* * *

Kanan glanced up just as an Imperial Star Destroyer appeared overhead with a full fleet in tow. From where he stood on the surface of Yavin 4, he could see a painting of a Chimaera curling over the underside of the hull. Beside him, Hera froze mid-sentence and reached for her blaster.

The aerial bombardment began a moment later.

“Oh, fuck,” Kanan said.


End file.
